Recruitment scandal hits Seoul council

By Kim Rahn

Seoul councilors are facing allegations that they exerted influence to have certain applicants get temporary jobs at the Seoul Metropolitan Council.

The council has denied the allegations, but civic groups are looking into suspected hiring contracts in order to file a petition with the prosecution.

Sources said that many unqualified people have landed jobs at the council using their ties to councilors.

According to the council, Tuesday, it hired 50 people in January on one-year contracts. Thirty of them were for ordinary administrative positions and 20 for positions that collect and review materials for legislation of city ordinances and other rules, which require high expertise in each field.

Even though their jobs are temporary, their annual wage reaches 30 million won ($27,600) including allowances, so more than 190 people applied for the positions.

“About half of them are suspected of having landed the jobs through their ties with incumbent councilors, although their abilities were far below the basic requirements,” a source said.

One of them is the daughter of an incumbent councilor and her only work experience was answering phone calls at a former council chairman’s office.

Another person had done only volunteer work for 20 years since his high school graduation, but was picked for a document review position for the council’s environment and water resources committee, which requires a high level of knowledge in that field.

A number of council members themselves have complained about the poor recruitment methods.

“While many young people suffer from unemployment, it is wrong to select public workers, who receive 30 million won in annual wages from taxpayers’ money, without reviewing their qualifications,” a councilor said on condition of anonymity.

It is suspected that to hire such “unqualified” people, some applicants who majored in law or who had careers with the council lasting years were eliminated after the interview process.

Some applicants who obtained high scores in resume screening got low scores after interviews, while those who had very low scores earned high scores later.

“An interviewer even gave a passing mark to an applicant who wrote in his resume, ‘I’ll work hard at the Gyeonggi Provincial Assembly,’” the councilor said.

The council, however, claimed that there was no procedural flaw in the recruitment, saying it had the Seoul Human Resources Development Center recruit the temporary workers on behalf of the council to secure “transparency.”

“We assessed the applicants’ attitudes and sincerity rather than their experience at the council or other skills,” it said in a press release. It said the councilor’s daughter or other people met the qualification it suggested in the recruitment notice.

Regarding the huge change of scores after interviews, it said, “Scoring is made according to each interviewer’s own conscience and professional judgment.”

Choi Woong-sig, head of the council steering committee, claimed that some councilors raised the suspicions without checking facts after applicants they wanted to hire were eliminated.